Fans of the Atari ST, Amiga, Commodore 64 and other classic computers may fondly remember the game Stunt Car Racer, a 3D racing game that takes place on an elevated track. In the game, you are dropped onto the track by a crane, and you compete against other computer opponents in a race with no walls to prevent you from going over the sides! There are also gaps in the tracks that you must jump and clear, and care must be taken not to inflict too much damage on your car or your vehicle will be wrecked, causing you to forfeit the race.

Now, nearly 30 years after Stunt Car Racer's initial release, it is finally available for Atari 8-bit computers! AtariAge members Fandal and Irgendwer have crafted a fantastic port of the game for Atari 8-bit computers, using the Commodore 64 version as a starting point. This new version of Stunt Car Racer contains all the features of the Commodore 64 version, as well as:

AtariAge members MortoffGames and Clint Thompson are exploring the possibility of recreating the highly sought-after Jaguar Pro-Controller. The Atari Jaguar Pro Controller is similar in appearance to the standard Jaguar controller, but adds three new action buttons (X, Y, and Z) as well as two shoulder buttons (L and R) at the top of the unit. These new buttons are mapped to buttons on the keypad. The dpad and buttons on the Jaguar Pro Controller are also improved over the original controller. Several later Jaguar games include support for the Jaguar Pro Controller's button configuration, but even older games such as Alien vs. Predator benefit from the additional buttons.

Jaguar Pro Controllers are currently selling for over $200 on eBay. The price for these new controllers will be $60, and they will be sold in sets of two to help meet the minimum manufacturing requirements. If you'd like to express interest in purchasing one or more sets, please send a message with your full name and e-mail address by December 31st, 2017 to jagprocontroller@gmail.com.

You can learn more details about the project and track its progress in our Atari Jaguar Forum.

Free Play Florida 2017 is a three day celebration of the history, artistry, competition, and creation of electronic gaming of all kinds driven by the enthusiastic gamers of the south east. Free Play Florida features 200 arcade and pinball games, hundreds of consoles, and countless things to learn, play and see!

This November 17th thru the 19th, Free Play Florida is being held in Orlando at the beautiful DoubleTree Sea World by Hilton right off I-4 and International Drive. Many current and classic and current pinball and arcade games will be on display, all set to free play! Join the International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA) sanctioned pinball tournament and compete with the best in the state of Florida, sit in on speaker panels that include industry icons, and visit vendors selling parts, memorabilia, and some of the coolest themed art on the planet!

AtariAge will be present for the first time at this year's Free Play Florida, with all the new homebrew games we had for sale at last month's Portland Retro Gaming Expo, as well as games that were released in the AtariAge Store back in June. We'll also have several systems setup so you can play our latest homebrew games.

If you're an Atari 2600 fan, be sure to check out the FPF 2017 Atari Cartridge being made available at the show. This is a limited edition hack of Midnight Magic (modified by Scott Dayton of NEO Games), complete with cartridge, manual and box. Proceeds benefit Free Play Florida (a non-profit organization), to help them continue offering this great event in the future! A few copies are still available for purchase online, and once those are gone, the only way to obtain a copy will be to purchase one at the show.

If you're an Atari Jaguar fan, we have three new Jaguar games we'll be selling for the first time at this year's Portland Retro Gaming Expo, taking place October 20-22! The three titles are Jeff Minter Classics (containing Llamatron 2112 and Revenge of the Mutant Camels), Escape 2042, and AstroStorm. Each game features a high-quality, professionally printed box, manual and cartridge label. Jeff Minter Classics also includes a double-sided poster featuring the stunning box art created by William Thorup for the package.

More information about each game below:

Jeff Minter Classics

For the first time on the Atari Jaguar, experience Jeff Minter's classic games "Llamatron 2112" and "Revenge of the Mutant Camels". Both games have been brought to the platform with the full blessing of Jeff Minter himself and are contained on a single cartridge.

Llamatron 2112: You play the part of a totally hard laser-spitting llama. Your mission is to collect all the tiny sheep, llamas, camels and goats you see on each wave. Standing in your way are great herds of unintelligent but numerous Grunt enemies, plus a veritable menagerie of nasty creeps which fire at you, dodge your fire, emit fire hydrants, try to ram you, murder your llamas and shoot your ass off with lasers. Kill them deadly. Not everything can be killed, and some enemies take more than one shot to destroy. Your ultimate objective - destroy the Ozric Tentacle of level 99 and get to Herd Heaven on level 100.

Revenge of the Mutant Camels: You are a rather threadbare-looking camel. If you are playing CPU Assist or Two-Player, you are accompanied by a large shaggy goat creature called an Ancipital. You are the Good Guys. Your mission is simple: stay alive through 42 zones of 7km each. These zones are populated by rampant telephone kiosks, skiing kangaroos, butch Greenham Common Peace Women, manic Minters, flying sheep and all the usual nonsense. These are the Bad Guys. They try to kill you off and you, naturally, and in keeping with the traditionally calm, rational, and thoughtful nature of videogames, get to waste them with lots of spectacularly destructive weaponry.

AstroStorm

Sometime in the future, aliens arrive.

A high quantity of large rocks have started raining from the sky causing devastation all around Earth. You must command the Earth Defense Craft to search our solar system and destroy any anomalous rocks or aliens before it's too late. Is this our last stand?

AstroStrom features a campaign story with 40 levels, skirmish mode with random levels, arcade modes for quick pick up and play, a mix of gameplay styles between shooting and space flying, powerups you can activate at strategic moments, separate scoreboards for each game type, and more!

Escape 2042

In the year 2042, a socialist government is in power, but nobody had foreseen the progressive dictatorship that settled in. The elites of the government hid behind a sham democracy, disconnected from the life the people were leading, and acted solely in their own interests. The regime considered the dissidents as conspiracy theorists, treated them like terrorists and locked them away in highly-secured prisons.

You are Shun, a computer engineer and member of the Truth Defenders coalition. After a clandestine operation to inform the people, you are locked away in the highly-secured prison Bulor 24. But your knowledge on security systems will enable you to escape. Your turn now to escape as fast as you can from this place!

Escape 2042 game takes place in three different environments (prison, desert, forest) and is interspersed with two mini-games, including a reversed “Shoot’em Up” and an original rappelling game! Avoid the security cameras, collect grenades to get rid of your enemies, and exercise your working memory by hacking the computers of the prison to unlock the doors or to deactivate the safety systems.

AtariAge will introduce several new homebrew games at the upcoming Portland Retro Gaming Expo, taking place October 20-22! For the Atari 2600, we will be selling three new titles: Super Cobra Arcade, Space Cactus Canyon, and Draconian. Each game features a high-quality, professionally printed box, manual and cartridge label. Draconian and Super Cobra Arcade also include 10" x 14" posters featuring the beautiful box artwork created by Nathan Strum. The first 30 who purchase Draconian at the show will also receive a 3D printed model of the space stations that appear in the game!

You can learn more about each of these exciting new games below:

Super Cobra Arcade

Super Cobra Arcade is a sequel to the classic arcade game Scramble in which the player must navigate their helicopter across a side-scrolling terrain through eleven unique stages. Each stage has its own challenges and obstacles, including tanks, targets, rockets, guided missiles, falling mines, fuel tanks, flying saucers and meteors. The player must avoid or destroy these hazards while maintaining the ship's limited fuel supply. The objective is to reach the end stage, invade the enemy's base and carry away the booty while trying to earn a high score.

You live in the scorching deserts of the Rocky Mountains in what used to be Alberta, Canada. The heat is nearly unbearable and wildfires are common. The rest of your fellow cacti have moved to a more temperate climate ... on Mars. They have sent a final spaceship to transport you there. Reaching it won't be easy. Water has become Earth's most precious resource, and although you are a cactus, you need every drop. You'll collect the water as you move through the canyons on your way to rendezvous with your rocket. Every so often, you'll even find a bucket of water, and you'll be able to rest for the night. But watch out for the humans! The few that remain after World War XII think they need the water even more than you. And they'll do anything to protect it.

Draconian

As pilot of the Space Fighter Draconian, your mission is to destroy enemy space stations – sector by sector – until they’re all wiped out! Your task won’t be easy - the enemy stations will relentlessly attack you with aggressive missiles and a barrage of defensive fire. Formations of missiles will gang up and hunt you down. But if you take out the lead missile, the others will scatter! If you see one of the enemy’s Spy Ships you need to destroy it immediately! If it escapes, it will report your position, and then...the enemy will throw everything it has at you. Can you survive long enough to move onto the next sector? Good luck! The galaxy is counting on you!

Draconian has all of the excitement you’d find in a classic arcade game! Featuring digitized voices, a radar scanner, enemy formation display, over 48 unique sectors, and much, much more! Draconian was created by Darrell Spice, Jr., whose previous works include Medieval Mayhem, Space Rocks, and Stay Frosty 2. The first 30 who purchase the game at the show will receive a 3D printed Draconian space station, courtesy of AtariAge member Tarzilla.

If you're not able to make it to the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, we'll be adding these games to the AtariAge Store for everyone in November. Watch for another announcement soon for another batch of games to debut at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo!

Join AtariAge at the 2017 Portland Retro Gaming Expo (PRGE), taking place Friday, October 20th through Sunday, October 22rd at the Oregon Convention Center. The show opens at 3pm on Friday so you can enjoy the huge Retrocade an extra day! The Portland Retro Gaming Expo (PRGE) is one of the largest classic gaming events in the country, bursting at the seams with video games and game-related activities all weekend long! Here's an incomplete list of what you'll find at the show:

AtariAge will have a large booth at the show, where you'll be able to play new and upcoming homebrew games, as well as our large back catalog of games we've published over the years. We'll also have several new games available to purchase for the first time in Portland--watch for those announcements coming soon!

As 2017 is the 40th anniversary of the Atari 2600, the PRGE organizers have announced a great lineup of panels celebrating the Atari 2600's rich history. One of these panels is titled, "Old Consoles Never Die", discussing the creation of new games for the Atari 2600 and other classic systems. The panel will be moderated by "Art of the Atari" author Tim Lapetino, who will be joined by homebrew authors Darrell Spice, Jr. (Medieval Mayhem, Space Rocks, and Stay Frosty 2) and John W. Champeau of Champ Games (Lady Bug, Conquest of Mars, Scramble), Atari alumni Howard Scott Warshaw (Yars' Revenge, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra Terrestrial), and Albert Yarusso, owner of AtariAge.

It is with great sadness we report that Atari enthusiast and homebrew programmer Ken Sider has unexpectedly passed away at the young age of 49. Ken was best known in the Atari community for developing the games Beef Drop for the Atari 5200, 7800, and Atari 8-bit computers, and b*nq for the Atari 7800, ports of the popular arcade games Burgertime and Q*bert. Both of these games were initially revealed as April Fool's jokes on the AtariAge Forums over a decade ago.

It always brings us great sorrow when such a talented and friendly individual is taken from us before his time. Ken provided friendly, technical advice to anyone who asked, and he will be a great loss to the classic gaming community. You can learn more about Ken's games and the utilities he programmed for these systems on his personal page, and you can discuss and honor his passing in our forums. Ken's games will continue to spread happiness to all they touch, and we offer our condolences to his friends and family. Ken, may you Rest In Peace and forever inspire and bring warmth to those whose lives you touch. Condolences may be left here.

If you'll be in the Pittsburgh area at the end of the month, be sure to check out ReplayFX, taking place July 27-30, 2017 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center! We've heard great things about this event from others who have attended in previous years. Here's more information straight from ReplayFX.org:

The ReplayFX Arcade & Video Game Festival will feature the largest public collection of working pinball, arcade, tabletop, and console games anywhere in the solar system, and all games are free to play with the price of admission! Attendees are also invited to attend a series of seminars dedicated to gaming and its associated tech-culture, browse merchandise in the marketplace, watch the world’s greatest pinball wizards compete in the Pinburgh Match-Play Championship, or enjoy a series of fun and wacky daily challenges at no additional cost!

ReplayFX will include multiple live music performances, a high-energy cosplay contest, inflatable obstacle courses, and more in a show floor packed with over 200,000 square feet of entertainment! Over $110,000 will be at stake for the competitive player. Thousands of games will be available for the casual fan. A family-friendly atmosphere will be available for the kids, and no one has to leave the galaxy to attend!

Golf Digest's Jeff Vrabel makes the argument that to this day, "Atari 2600 Golf remains the finest sport video game simulation". Through humor, the author describes the graphics, gameboard, gameplay, and difficulty of the original 1980 Atari 2600 Golf. Here's a video review of Atari 2600 Golf if you need a quick refresher in case you've forgotten how wonderful this game is. What games have made a similar impression to you after all these years? Join the discussion in our Atari 2600 Forum.